Caboose Makes Last Stop

Whimsical Train Car Is Trip Into City's Past

WINTER GARDEN -- It's brighter than a school bus and as big a train. Well, it's not quite as big. It's only the very last car of a train -- a caboose.

But drivers passing through the center of downtown Winter Garden are swiveling their heads for a closer look at the newest display at the Heritage Museum.

The history museum, opened three years ago, occupies a former train station in the west Orange County community. A little more than a week ago, a crane lowered the caboose onto its new track between the museum's front door and Plant Street.

Although the museum still looks like a train station, and even has signal arms mounted on its roof, the 50-year-old caboose has completed a scene from the city's past.

Parents of many Winter Garden residents disembarked at the station in the early 1900s, looking for opportunity in a city thriving with the export of citrus and the import of tourists seeking recreation at nearby Lake Apopka.

"This is the birthplace of Winter Garden,'' said Jerry Chicone, a longtime resident of the city and a chief patron of the privately owned museum. "This town prospered because of the railroad.''

Still, newcomers may not know what to make of a caboose, a type of railroad car that served as a rolling home and lookout post for train crews.

Tracks that long ran through the center of Winter Garden were torn out a few years ago and replaced with the West Orange Trail for skaters, bikers and joggers.

Even before then, railroads had stopped using cabooses altogether.

Chicone said the museum had searched for a locomotive but jumped at the chance to buy a caboose from a Daytona Beach collector. The caboose cost about $18,000, while its truck and crane rides cost another $10,000.

Chicone wrote personal checks to bring the caboose to his hometown.

However, Florida Central Railroad in Plymouth paid for and installed the short stretch of track -- rock base, crossties and twin ribbons of rail -- where the 40-ton caboose is now parked.

The caboose isn't from the Atlantic Coast Line railroad, a well-known system from Florida's past. Instead, the caboose bears the name of the Chessie System on its side.

Chicone said he picked the Chessie caboose, retired from service in 1984, because of its tough, rot-resistant steel skin.

"Anybody who knows anything about trains knows this is the Cadillac of cabooses,'' Chicone said.

It may be the top of the line among cabooses, but accommodations are less than fancy.

Benches that also served as cots are made of painted wood. The air inside carries a strong whiff of old wheel grease spattered onto the caboose's underside. Even the crew spittoon is unpolished.

But the view offered by the caboose couldn't be matched by any luxury automobile.

An observation deck pokes up from the center of the boxy caboose, providing a lookout in all directions from a dozen feet above the track.

Soon, museum officials will install steps to allow visitors to climb into the caboose to see for themselves. An old way of looking at Winter Garden has returned.